Just How Hard is University to Overcome

scottalanmiller

@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

I never put really any faith in associate degrees. I thought the stats are a lot worse on them?

Associates degrees have the lowest barrier to entry for the "I'm a college degree holder" mark. Many jobs only say "degree required" or are more willing to negotiate when you have an AS. Because getting one is so easy, they value is easy to justify.

Also, they give you roughly two years of being "degreed" to look for work while you pursue a bachelor's degree which can be handy if you are trying to play both sides of the fence.

StorageNinja

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

Personally, I wish I'd taken a skip year. Would have been more valuable to go work for a little bit, and go backpacking Asia for 6 months to figure out what I wanted to do in life.

Also highly recommended, they say (I have no stats on this, but I've been told this a bit) that a skip year spent meaningfully traveling (that's not subjective, is it?) is more likely to positively impact lifetime income than finishing a degree will.

Another thing to point out is that The unexamined life is not worth living...
If it's just about wealth, but the quality of life.

Could I make more money in some blue collar trade doing 80 hour weeks in physically demanding labor? Sure. But I like what I do, and the travel has secondary benefits and that carries some value. There's always a way to make more money. If there's anything I've learned from internet forums is MANY people have reasons (some are dumb to me, whatever) to not make more money.

scottalanmiller

@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

Personally, I wish I'd taken a skip year. Would have been more valuable to go work for a little bit, and go backpacking Asia for 6 months to figure out what I wanted to do in life.

Also highly recommended, they say (I have no stats on this, but I've been told this a bit) that a skip year spent meaningfully traveling (that's not subjective, is it?) is more likely to positively impact lifetime income than finishing a degree will.

Another thing to point out is that The unexamined life is not worth living...
If it's just about wealth, but the quality of life.

Could I make more money in some blue collar trade doing 80 hour weeks in physically demanding labor? Sure. But I like what I do, and the travel has secondary benefits and that carries some value.

Sure, but the question is - does college aid or hinder that? And everything we've seen statistically and observationally gives no indication that it aids in that for people in careers where college is optional. I totally agree with the premise, but believe that college makes achieve the more esoteric goals harder to do.

scottalanmiller

@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

If there's anything I've learned from internet forums is MANY people have reasons (some are dumb to me, whatever) to not make more money.

Like SAT scores, income potential is a proxy for freedom and power. Tracking income, we assume, gives us insight not just into how much you could earn, but how much value you can get from a career. So, for example, if my goal was not money but the ability to control the location where I work, the length or my day, work from home or weeks of vacation a year, we assume that tracking income in the brackets reflects my ability to demand whatever benefits matter to me.

scottalanmiller

This can't always be true, and I think that money proxies power poorly between career categories. But within a single one, I think that it is pretty useful. For example, a high earning IT pro has more power to dictate what matters to him more than a low earning one. But a high earning IT pro comparing to a comparably paid doctor or pharmacist would not be able to compare.

tirendir

@scottalanmiller

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@storageninja said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

You can find proxies for success that have statistic significance. Economic background, SAT scores, etc. Economists have been studying "why are rich people rich, and poor people poor" for a REALLY long damn time.

Find any study for this, though. It's all about motivation and self education. I've never seen anyone do a study that in any way would be useful to compare against college. My guess is that the researchers are all from colleges and know that they'd be defunded if they produced that data.

I've read a number of studies where they've actually been finding that raw IQ matters more to the question of why the rich people are rich (who didn't inherit it) and the poor are poor more than anything. The problem is of course, there's really not much that can be done if you don't have a high IQ, because there's about nothing anyone can do to improve their IQ. If, as they say, IQ is really just how quickly and efficiently people can process and utilize data, the theory that IQ directly effects probability for success makes a fair bit of sense. They haven't said anything ultra-conclusive in their studies aside from the fact that they found pretty universal links between higher IQ and greater success in general.

It would naturally make sense too that those with higher innate intelligence are more likely to be able to self-teach more content more quickly than those with less, but higher IQ would then also by the same theory penalize those people even more in the University setting. Interestingly enough though, the studies were all being done by big colleges and universities world-wide as a collaborative effort.

BRRABill

The link that @StorageNinja posted is interesting.

Though @scottalanmiller they list the national salary average as $33,500.

So is your number of $38K for HS higher because in theory HS might garner more salary?

Those are also medians, BTW.

scottalanmiller

@tirendir said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

I've read a number of studies where they've actually been finding that raw IQ matters more to the question of why the rich people are rich (who didn't inherit it) and the poor are poor more than anything. The problem is of course, there's really not much that can be done if you don't have a high IQ, because there's about nothing anyone can do to improve their IQ.

You can, actually, but it is hard and you can only move the needle a little. But you can do something about it. When I was at the hedge fund, they had a lot of research on this because they were very interested in the best of the best and not just how to find them, but how to nurture them.

BRRABill

@scottalanmiller

Did someone hijack your account?

Why do you keep saying college.

It's throwing me off, looks suspicious.

scottalanmiller

@tirendir said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

It would naturally make sense too that those with higher innate intelligence are more likely to be able to self-teach more content more quickly than those with less, but higher IQ would then also by the same theory penalize those people even more in the University setting.

That's a great point, and I agree. The more capable you are, the more university penalizes you. The more your time is wasted, the more classes are boring, the less the professor has benefits for you, the more the classroom discussions are wasted, etc. University benefits are greatest to those that struggle the most. One of the reasons that I feel society promotes university is that it is a "leveler" making more people fit in the bell curve by making the bottom look not so bad and the top look not so good.

Large industry wants to hire the middle, the college system makes a bigger middle. It providers more worker bees at lower cost for the system.

scottalanmiller

@brrabill said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

So is your number of $38K for HS higher because in theory HS might garner more salary?

My number is from the Department of Labor. I believe only HS grads are included, not drop outs, so that might be the factor.

scottalanmiller

Here is an example of where the stats are really hard to make useful...

Take high school level home schoolers. There are two primary groups that do this, one is the group that doesn't trust education and wants their kids to not be exposed to the school system. Mostly this is the religious group and mostly they do it to shield kids from information.

The other, also distrusting the education system, feel that the education system is too "teach to the middle" or doesn't specialize enough or is just too "easy" and slow so teach their kids at home so that they can move faster, focus on topics of relevance, learn more, etc.

Statistically, there is no reasonable means of determining which group is which as they are just "homeschoolers". But it's clear to see that one group is likely to vastly outperform the market and the other is likely to vastly under-perform. But we have no means of proving who came from which group.

Same with college skippers or even high school drop outs. The top performers, those flying in their private jets and making ten figure salaries, are lost in a sea of people who just couldn't handle going to PE class or whatever. Those that struggle with the material and those bored with how uninformed their teachers are get statistically put together.

But in looking at your career and the advantage of education for a career, we know only the high performing group is the one we are interested in the stats on. But have no reasonable means to acquire those stats.

worden2

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

Does college have value? yes and know.

There's the T-shirt people! Not what SAM intended I'm sure, but...

scottalanmiller

@worden2 said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

@scottalanmiller said in Just How Hard is University to Overcome:

Does college have value? yes and know.

There's the T-shirt people! Not what SAM intended I'm sure, but...

LOL